Igor Baccini ExperiencePlus! Bike Fleet Manager and Tour Leader Extraordinaire

Sylva Florence shares a recent conversation she had with Igor during a break from work at "The Farm".

Although Igor can mostly be found these days madly emailing away in his windowless office at “The Farm” – an old pig barn converted into the ExperiencePlus! European headquarters which is also the occasional home to tour leaders with a few days between trips and staff from the US working in Italy – don’t be fooled into thinking he’s usually sitting still.

“Physical activity for me is very important,” Igor said, sweeping the kitchen with the sort of ferocious energy typically reserved for soccer players heading towards a goal. “I start shaking if I don’t do any physical activity.”

Perhaps Igor’s need for action is what brought him to ExperiencePlus! While studying at University of Bologna, he chanced to glance at a job posting board and spotted an ExperiencePlus! announcement for a tour guide.

“I was curious.  I thought this is weird, this is interesting,” Igor said. “The fact that it was an original job that I never thought existed, it definitely caught my eye.”

Now, almost 10 years later, Igor divides his time between leading tours and the unique feat of managing the company’s fleet of bikes. When he started as a tour leader the fleet consisted of about 120 bikes. Now, there are over 300.

 “The biggest challenge probably is being on top of where all the bikes end up, making sure they all go where they should and then come back,” Igor said.

After logistics, bike maintenance is sometimes a job in itself: the bikes themselves must be replaced every three to four years; their frames take a beating during loading and unloading; derailers and housing cables wear out; and most frequently, drive trains must be repaired.

“Everyone on a tour has to learn how to ride a new bike, and everyone does something wrong with shifting or something at first,” Igor said. “We understand, but it’s like a rental car, people maybe aren’t as careful sometimes as if the bike was theirs.”

After the work day is done Igor will shut down the computer and literally run out the door to assail the concrete, skateboard in hand.

“Doesn’t matter where I skate, just need to be with the right people,” Igor said. “Could be a ledge in front of your house and it would be great.”

 Now in his 30s, Igor has been immersed in the skateboarding culture since he was in his early teens.

“I don’t consider [skateboarding] a sport,” Igor said. “There aren’t conventional maneuvers you have a name for. But at the same time, it manages to be something that is recognized internationally.”

His hometown of Ravenna, Italy is a skateboarding haven, a place where kids still can converge to learn new tricks and make friends. The skatepark may be exactly where Igor fell in love with skateboarding – his face lights up as he talks and mops.

“A skatepark is an important place for skateboarders to meet,” Igor said. “It’s important to learn from each other, to progress.”

If skateboarding was one catalyst through which Igor was first was able to see the world – darting around Europe on all expenses paid vacations to compete in skateboarding events and attend openings of new skateparks – it certainly was not his only introduction to travel.

He fondly remembers family trips to Croatia, driving all night, sleeping in the car and waking up in “a different world.” His family would spend hot summer days in their little boat and nights in nearby campgrounds. As 12 or 13-year-old, he remembers being intrigued by the presence of foreigners at the camps and by the wonderful strangeness of their languages.

“Campgrounds are a great place for kids, a safe place,” Igor said. “There are lots of other kids, lots of people speaking in other languages. It was fascinating for a kid, even though it was just on the other side of the Adriatic [from Italy].”

Since then, his travels have taken him many places, including wild, untouched tropical Cuba and dry, vast free Australia.

“It’s nice to discover new things, new people, new landscapes,” Igor said, tossing a sweatshirt across a chair; he was still in warm, comfortable clothes after attempting to go surfing before work at 7 a.m. “Travel gives me a lot of energy to do what I have to do in my normal life; it’s something different that helps re-charge your batteries.”

Plainly, Igor enjoys helping people see the world from the saddle of a touring bike. For Igor, travel lends him a sense of accomplishment when the sun goes down – from the top floor of a four-star hotel in Turkey, or a campsite by the Adriatic Sea.

“I always associate the best things with activity,” Igor said, darting out the front door to prop the screen door open with a box of empty glass bottles. “Sitting in a car is not as fun for me. Even if I’m in beautiful place, I think [being in a car] is about one-third to one-fourth as fun as being there on a bike.”

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Sylva Florence

Sylva Florence joined the ExperiencePlus! ranks in late March. When she's not putting miles on her pink road bike, she enjoys traveling, writing and taking photos (because she studied print journalism in college and this makes her feel like she's using her degree). Back home in Colorado this winter, she'll resume her position with the Forest Service as a volunteer back country snow ranger and barista at Starbucks. When the snow melts, Sylva will resume her summertime gig as a wilderness ranger and wild land firefighter with the Forest Service. In the future, she hopes to speak at least three languages, finally learn guitar and travel the world by bike and motorcycle with her fiancé Tyler